"Surely," you say to Lady Adara, "The most important thing you can do for your grandchildren is to find actual solutions, not just state you hope there's something better." Before anyone can jump in, you turn your head sharply to the left, looking at Councilor Omar. "And surely if the crisis is so bad that all we can do is implement desperate measures, there's not room for fighting each other or pocketing extra that doesn't exist." The tension in the room thickens immediately. Both groups are trying to be persuasive enough to walk away with a strong 'win'. A blunt approach is the only way that comes to mind for you to stop them from continuing to make empty declarations and swing this back around to an actual attempt at mediation.
You resist an urge to tug on your collar. Nerves now would just wreck the moment you've created. Instead, you spread your arms. "Philosophy is all well and good, but we need to find something that works. Regardless of how it's going to go afterward, I don't want us to leave without finding some way to... not fight each other. How many people have died directly from this conflict?"
From beside Lady Adara, Nokomis makes a strange sound of amusement, one you can't quite recognize beyond that. "This from the group that killed Egon?"
"Immediately after he killed several other people and then expressed a direct intent to kill me and my friends."
"He was my son's friend, you know." You remember Lady Adara's introduction. It seems Nokomis was deeply involved in the same school that Egon was in; she was the only one in her family to fall below the power line where people died. "I was teaching him our style so he could honor his friend's memory."
"I'm sorry for your loss," you tell her, not letting sympathy into your tone. "But, surely, that just drives home how important it is that we talk this out, now."
Nokomis opens her mouth, but Adara speaks up first. "Nokomis." She doesn't need to say anything else. Nokomis subsides. "So." Adara fixes you with a piercing glare. "You're just expecting us to talk this out now, although it hasn't worked before." Her disapproval is almost a physical force.
You force yourself to rally. "That was then. Things are different now, aren't they? We've seen what happens if we don't all come together, and we do have to sort out things like defense, food movements, and other issues eventually, if we don't kill each other first. Why not now?"
Adara tilts her head slightly, without her fixed scowl lessening to any appreciable degree. "Indeed. Why not now? We'll be much more amenable with the specter of death from a strategic potion reserve held over our head." Was that sarcasm? "I'm not opposed. We can certainly contribute a lot. The few remaining priests who came to my banner are still a good resource for some magical knowledge, and are good at reassuring people who are nervous. In addition, we've even managed to turn out a few replacement magical items, such as the ring I notice is on your short friend's finger." Her eyes find Samir. He grins, completely unashamed. "We're here to help, ultimately. If this is the best we can do, so be it."
Omar blinks, looking taken aback at this turn. You can tell he'd rather bluster, but there's a certain satisfaction below the surface that he ruthlessly suppresses. "Indeed. Well, the Regency Council encompasses more of us than came to the table today, so... I will have to confer with my counterparts to finalize any deal, but if we can come to an understanding, I have every faith they will agree to it, too. I simply mention it as an important formality." He leans back in his chair, using his gut wedged under the table to keep him from toppling backwards. "We've been gathering everything we can to ensure the flow of cargo vessels across the Shallow Ocean. It's a daunting task, but with enough manpower and connections, we are doing all right. Although..." Here he fixes you with a stare. "It's indeed lucky that you mention defense. If you're going to flaunt the power you're hoarding, that includes you, does it not?" You don't respond, recognizing a trap when you see it. "I'm sure I can work out a mutually agreeable deal with Lady Adara, given the chance, but there are things that need to be done. There's a baby kraken off the coast. Just before I came over here, I received word: it attacked a fishing boat. We can't let a powerful monster like that grow and dominate our seas. It would lock us in here if it truly goes after our shipping. Surely you can help us by dealing with that?" He smiles broadly. Though his teeth are merely human, instead of a thicket of needles, you can't help but be reminded of Ant's grin.
You spend the rest of the meeting in a daze. True to their words, Omar and Adara do manage to make some actual headway in terms of coming to operational agreements, but you couldn't have said what any of it was. You were too wrapped up in thinking about what you'd managed to get volunteered for. The simple fact of it was that if you turned this down, you risked being seen as a paper tiger, which could easily break down the entire summit, maybe even have it turn openly violent.
A kraken is one of the Shallow Ocean's apex predators, making "baby" something of a relative term. They grow to colossal size, with the just-hatched ones barely larger than a dinghy but the largest dwarfing warships, with somewhere between eight and twenty muscular tentacles as large around as some tree trunks that lash out seemingly independently as they seize their prey and immobilize it.
They are ravenous predators, too, sometimes trapping whole schools of fish in small lagoons or tide pools and feasting until there are none left. For obvious reasons, they are equally happy to attack fishermen at times, especially after they have finished making their catch and are on their way back to safe harbor. Luckily, they were never particularly numerous, both due to their own low reproductive rate and the fact that putting down any kraken that grew too terrible or aggressive to mortals was one of the 'standard' heroic duties.
One of your favorite stories while you were still growing up with your family was your mother's telling of "Seven Heroes Against the Sea", the tale of a dashing swordsman who had to gather six unlikely companions to save a floating island from a gargantuan kraken that was slowly catching up. As you grew up and realized just how fantastical a tale it was, the less you imagined you would get to star in a version of it. Life has thrown some unlikely swerves at you.
About the only other useful piece of information you manage to retain from the meeting is a plan to meet with Admiral General Hobi, who both Omar and Adara tell you is the man to contact with more information on this kraken you need to drive away or kill.
- -
The Admiral General's office is by the docks. You've never met the man, but you've managed to pick up a few things. The first is actually just from knowing his title: he's managed to reach the rank of admiral while in the service of the old imperial family. That sort of exalted rank was typically reached only by those with some connection to wealth or nobility, but even they would tend to stall out their careers as commodores without some demonstrated competence, as well. The other part is the "General" attachment: he is one of the few who specialized in land combat, and not the ship-to-ship brawls that are more common.
Since the Great Dying, he has been the highest-ranking officer in the capital, holding together most of the military forces that remain without the powerful mages and heroes that made up a lot of the backbone of the navy. Some few had thrown in their lot more directly with either Lady Adara or the Regency Council, of course, but the majority still listened to the chain of command.
The Admiral General hasn't seemed interested in political gain for himself; he had made it clear that he was going to throw support behind whatever legitimate government formed, making his allegiance the prize that the squabbling groups had set their eyes on until you interrupted.
When you arrive at his office, your companions stay outside and you are shown in by a clearly overworked assistant, who has the sort of nervous energy of someone who has a thousand things to do but only the time to do six hundred, assming he doesn't sleep but does have lots of coffee.
He doesn't stick around after introducing you. He just opens the door, says names, and departs.
That leaves you alone with the Admiral. He's reading over paperwork at his desk as you come in. You can't read all of it while it's upside down and this far away, but you see everything from maintenance logs on war galleys to reports of disciplinary procedures. The latter is what he's directly working on right now, with one of the magical pens that regulate ink flow smoothly. Probably it was something that wasn't powerful enough to crack and break in the Great Dying. From what you do manage to read before the Admiral puts down his pen and pushes all the paperwork to one side, the discipline may have come from scuffle between soldiers supporting different flags in the current unpleasantness.
"Hello there," Hobi says, rubbing his slightly gray goatee in an unconscious gesture.
"Admiral General Kihn Hobi," you reply. It comes out in a weird, strangled tone. You cough to clear your throat.
"Nervous?" He give you a commiserating smile. "Understandable. You really gave away the farm today, didn't you?"
"Did I?" You had thought things had gone rather well, apart from the bit where you ended up agreeing to kill a kraken.
Hobi shakes his head. "Well, I imagine you stopped the immediate fighting. But the underlying tension is still there, and that's not going to go away. If I had to guess from what was reported, Lady Adara thinks she can sway one of us to support her before her situation gets too dire, but the Regency Council has too much more money and influence. She's going to lose this fight eventually, unless something changes. Hail Prince Ketut and his regents!" The last is in a sarcastic tone.
A memory resurfaces. A Zahira that should never be, howling "You wavered, you hit a point where you said 'someone else fix this for me'" at you as her golden gaze pierces you. You push the memory down. This certainly wasn't the same event as in your dream, not without you having the slightest idea who or what 'Granny' was or the need for a new type of magic to solve it. Still... it's concerning. "Do you not want the Regency Council to win the power struggle, then?"
"Bunch of greedy pricks who were jerks while I was growing up, though no worse than most. Never mind that, though," Hobi says, brusquely. "By the sound of things, you've got a little squad of people with some power, a stock of powerful potions, and a kraken to kill. Not bad for someone I hadn't heard of three days ago. Now, let's get down to the brass tacks and see what I can do to make sure you can be kraken slayers." You do so.
Krakens are physically mighty, but lack the cunning of dragons and the magic of demons and other spirits. If given a tempting target while hungry, which is most of the time, a kraken can be expected to atack, jetting up from behind and below its prey, then grabbing with entangling tentacles.
Fighting one is usually a question of seeing the ambush as early as possible, then trying to bring enough power at the kraken to kill it or drive it away, even through the salt water it cloaks itself with and its own rubbery bulk. Electricty, poison and vastly oversized weapons are favored in the hunt.
You, of course, have none of those conveniently to command. About all that Hobi can give you is a simple, small sailing vessel you can use for the hunt and some idea of when and where it's been seen. It shouldn't be too hard to find it if you want to.
Unfortunately.
- -
"This stinks," Samir says. You've gotten back with your group now, and are beginning to go over the provided little boat. He's gone up and down the single mast and tested the rudder already. "I really don't want to try to try to fight any sort of giant monster, and this is an aquatic one. You know what happens if you shoot an arrow into water?" He mimes doing so. "It stops quickly. Because it doesn't fly through water. And even if I go get a sling or something instead, you know what happens then? Sling bullets just sort of sink. And I'm not really good with a spear or anything."
"I actually wouldn't mind just abusing a potion to kill this thing," Zahira says, her eyes sparkling. "I could probably deduce a lot about how to make such things by seeing it in action."
"If not a potion, how else could we even fight it?" That's Kalju, who is looking up at the rigging with much less familiarity than Samir has.
Dawn isn't actually helping. She just lounges in the bottom of the hull. "Well, we could do the stupid thing and try to fight it with our weapons and magic, but even the heroes of old would sometimes lose people if they tried to fight an adult kraken. I'm not anxious to try that." She looks at the hand she's bargained away to Ant. "We could... ask Ant, I suppose?"
"I just wish we had a bigger ship than this," Samir says with a sigh, finally stopping his energetic inspection of the vessel. "It's not big enough or seaworthy enough for us to take anywhere far from shore, so I'd expect we would sink if we tried to just run away on this little wooden toy."
"You'd run away?" Dawn arches an eyebrow at Samir.
"Yes, I would rather run away than get bit in half by a monster?" Samir doesn't even seem combative, just incredulous that she would have a different point of view on this.
Dawn snorts and looks away from him. "Boss, Ant?"
You take out the pendant and shake it. "Ant?"
"You summoned me?" Ant appears with a flourish and an overly dramatic kneel, as if you were a god and she were the supplicant. Around you, your companions all react with shock. You realize, somewhat belatedly, that you never had a chance to tell them about Ant's newest form, meaning that all of them are taken by surprise by the half-you/half-Dawn image. Ant's identity being so radically shaped by other people is still hard to process.
Once everyone has gotten their reaction out of their systems, you explain to Ant what you're doing. "So we're exploring our options right now. Could you fight that kraken for us?"
Ant thinks about it, hard. "Yes," she finally says. "I believe I could. I would have two demands, however. First: if I do this for you, I get to show off. No hiding myself. I get to reveal myself to anyone who's watching. I'd still be bound to return to you, but people can watch. Second, I get to destroy that specific boat over there." Ant points.
Everyone's heads turn. What she is pointing at is a hard-used fishing boat, one of dozens of very similar ones owned by someone or some family. It's not large, visibly anything special, or even particularly well-maintained. Sadly, this time of day, there's no one there who's visibly the owner for you to go and specifically ask. "Why?"
"Because it's a little fishing boat that I want to destroy, and I don't want to be any more specific. It's not that bad a deal, you know. Are you sure that you won't spread your potions around too broadly and cause collateral damage? This is specific collateral damage you get to know ahead of time. It also doesn't use up your supply of potions." You don't immediately accept. "One more sweetener, then. I know you keep being suspicious of me, but I would like to stretch myself and do this, so I'll even cancel my control over Dawn's arm. That leaves me with less options."
[] Plan to use a potion to fight the kraken.
- [] Hell's Heart, which burns with unquenchable flames for days
- [] Hydra's Breath, which poisons all it touches
- [] Gorgon's Gaze, which transmutes victims to stone
[] Accept Ant's deal, and let her fight the kraken for you.
[] Fight it with your strength of arms and magic.
- [] ...and I have a cunning plan that cannot fail! (write-in tactics)
Voting will be by top option first, so a vote for any potion is a vote to use a potion. The last option does not require tactics; in the absence of audience suggestions, I'll still be trying to give reasonable tactics for the group, but maybe you have something clever I didn't think of!
